Microblog Memes

I feel like this isn't super new. You haven't been able to do things like talk academically about network security or cryptography without being incredibly critical of government for decades.

My professors sure were. I felt really bad for them, honestly. They were the driving force to make philosophy and ethics courses mandatory at my university in order to recieve a comp sci degree.

"If you work in these areas long enough, at a high enough level, you WILL be asked to compromise something for the benefit of a state actor, and you might not even realize it's happening. The person asking you to do it might not even realize what is really happening." Was what our prof told a packed lecture hall.

Wasn't even the wildest. Before compsci I was doing mechanical engineering.

We had an assignment to design a railcar layout for transporting livestock. It gave the minimal parameters for the animals, established client driven acceptable losses for the livestock, etc...

We all cracked away at it. After we handed them all in, the profs were like "nowhere in the spec was the actual animals named, was no one curious?"

Silence.

They had given us a literal Nazi spec discovered post WWII. It was for moving people to fucking concentration camps.

"You're smart people. People are going to ask you to do bad things. They're going to try and hide thier intentions. Don't collaborate with Nazis. Don't ever use what I teach you to hurt people."

I genuinely used to believe this too, but the CCC opened my eyes to anarchism, and then HN opened my eyes to plutarchism.

I iterate now between several modes of: "GPLv3 is the best license humanity can use to better itself, decentralised projects are mandatory to keep authoritarian regimes at bay, but damn do I love using MIT projects in my hobby code projects, and hmm it would be nice to make some side income with said hobby project...."

Each of these contradictions of the other, which bothered me in my late 20s, but now I think it's relatively normal to inhabit several conflicting ideals at once

I'm sure these topics become relevant at some point, but I'm doubtful that it's absolutely necessary to address them in an intro course. how does leftist ideology help kids understand what a while loop does

like, literacy can do all of these things too, that doesn't mean you have to introduce those concepts at the same time as the abc's

The absolute worst thing about how STEM is taught in my country is how entirely devoid curriculums are of critical theory. You take inputs, outputs, energies and production as-is, and you get a crop of drones who think such discussions are irrelevant. Then they graduate, start working and earning good money -- and suddenly they support capitalist production structures because they're "rational" and "objective". Some then become the biggest chuds ever known to man.

I remember that I discussed gentrification with a civil engineer who happened to be my boss, a very renowned and talented person in our branch. He didn't know what gentrification was...

I guess it is just a matter of time before the Trump regime designates logic as hardcore leftist ideology

I don't think OP is implying while loops require ideological understandings, but rather more foundationally as to understand how computer commodities are made and traded, the concept of centralization simply arises. Thus, the discussion of control, IP, etc, and now AI and labor.

It's an introduction class, just start with history of computers and shift to programming from there.

You know, the history of computers, the Alan Turing, and the first assembly language, and the first software engineer, and "the entire pre-1992 internet."

If it's science, it's woke!
Real patriots use the abacus.

I can't help but broadly agree, computing is the new de facto means of production. It is inherently political.

I wouldn't want to be a CS teacher at this decade, more than half the code will be AI generated. Would just suck the life force out of you seeing how little students care about actually learning the stuff.

"...because when we go online, we free ourselves from consumerism, racism, and get to express ourselves however we want without it getting back to our school or employer."

Honest Trailers may have gone downhill from thier peak, but Hackers (and the OG Dune) videos gave great lines worth sharing

What is the saying? Something about people who learn about how technology works begin to shun technology?

Programming?

scoffs

Woke.

I'm Antigramming like a true Patriot.

What? This is plain stupid

It's not even that "hardcore" of ideology honestly. It depends a lot on the lens you view it through your society. If it's far right, then saying "water is a human right!" is going to seem extreme leftism.

Well, programming lessons taught in 2016 are still pretty much going to teach programming now, so it shouldn't be too hard if you put your mind to it.

This may shock you, but if you think like this, you might be a hardcore leftist.

Also, I'm reminded of the Ghostbusters (1984) quote:

Dr. Raymond Stantz: Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities, we didn't have to produce anything! You've never been out of college! You don't know what it's like out there! I've WORKED in the private sector. They expect results.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjzC1Dgh17A

I've seen a world where access to knowledge and power is paywalled. And I've seen the one where that freedom is a granted right. I know which one I picked, and it's because SO HELP ME, IF I CAN'T FIX IT MYSELF, I WILL BREAK IT MYSELF!